Honestly? I have no idea how to pirate now. That’s the biggest change.

Wash dishes while you cook. It was a game-changer for me.

No one was watching you poop, Americans don’t look between the cracks, we know better.

I got a $100 fine because the curtains I decorated my bedroom with were visible to the outside and not an approved color.

Never again.

I don’t think it’s better to go for highly biased news at all, I don’t care what the reporter thinks or feels about the facts, I just want them. The overtly biased news outlets are filled to the brim with opinion. If there are facts a story is leaving out, it will eventually get to me through the absolute garbage microphone that is social media, and I can check out the sources from there.

1440 is what I use. It’s literally bare-bones news articles devoid of any opinion, just facts. They cover both US and international news, and have small culture and sports blips that aren’t click-baity. And it’s emailed to you every day. :)

But we’re all gonna die,

Decompose into daffodils and dandelions,

The bees will use our flowers for whatever they like,

Make the honey that our grandkids will put inside,

their morning tea, it’s the thing of life.

When I was 6, I was in a boating accident.

My family and I were waterskiing and camping off this little island on the lake. We did it all the time, since my uncle had a speedboat.

My mom was about to take her turn, and I was sitting in the boat behind my uncles seat, facing the back to watch her ski. When my uncle tried to start the boat, it faltered. Made a rut-rut-rut noise but wouldn’t start. After try three or four, I smelled something awful, and pinched my nose. The last thing I remember is my mom asking me if I smelled something bad, and I nodded.

The engine exploded into a ball of fire and engulfed me.

The next thing I know, I’m under water and bobbing to the surface (wear your life-vests, kids). My mom is screaming and my cousin is swimming to me and drags me to shore. My uncle (just outside the blast radius) had reached into the fire to grab me and thrown me into the water.

I was… calm. I felt nothing. We had to hail a passing boat to take us off the island to get to a hospital. I remember my mom asking me if I hurt, and shaking my head.

If i looked at my arms and legs and saw what I looked like at that point, I can’t remember at all, but I was covered in third-degree burns. I was in the hospital for a while, and then was in a wheelchair for a bit while my legs were wrapped. I had to have water therapy for my burns. I do remember the oblong, black boils that developed over my burns in the months that followed. For a long period of time, I couldn’t be in the sun, and had to wear a bonnet when I went to school.

My skin healed beautifully though. I’ve only got one long-lasting scar from it on my shoulder. The doctor said that my uncle throwing me into the cold lake water is what most-likely saved my skin from being permanently damaged. I’m sure being 6 years old helped immensely, too.

What was it like?

I’ve got pairs scattered all over the world at the bottom of lakes. I always forget I have them on my head and lose them in the water when I fall in.

Join study groups, and when others ask questions, explain the answers as best you can in your own words.

This was key in study retention.

Hmm, creepy…

Not really creepy, but the scariest thing to happen to me was traveling through Europe with two friends, we’re all women. We arrive in Paris and exit the metro and ride the escalator up to the street, and froze. It was, according to the directions on the hostel website, the correct metro stop, but the area immediately felt dangerous to the three of us. The space surrounding the elevators were encased by chain-link fencing, and bodies were pressed against them all up and down the sides. There were fights breaking out, yelling, etc, and it was mostly men. I don’t have problems with men or anything, but… yeah, it was scary.

So we stand there for a bit trying to figure out what to do. The directions on the website said to exit the metro and follow the building numbers “up” to get to the hostel, which was a good 15 minute walk for us. So we decide, okay, no biggie, we’ll exit the fence area and just start heading in a direction and follow the numbers on the buildings, figure out which way is which and just bolt ahead without stopping to talk with anyone.

And that’s what we do. Except every single number on the side of every building is 18. Over and over again as we walk, it’s all 18. And we can’t see any other numbers. So we pause, because there was no other direction on the website, just “follow the numbers up”, but there was no “up” or “down”, just 18.

We stand there for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. I was the only one who had traveled overseas before, and the other two started to seriously panic, and I know I had to make some kind of decision, because we didn’t feel safe just standing there and if the panic really set in for them this would become much harder.

These two men walk by, and one of them catches the terrified look of one of my friends, and asks in perfect (but british-accented) English: “Are you ladies okay? Are you lost?” And we’re like: “Yes! Do you know how to get to this hostel?” And he looks at the name and says: “Yes, I know where this is, and you’re going in the wrong direction.” Then he pauses and says: “This area is pretty dangerous, its on our way, we can show you.” Then, he points down this particularly dark (it was daytime), narrow alley and says: “we’re just stopping by a place to eat this way, would you like to come?”

And this was where a decision had to come in. On one hand, the area we were in wasn’t good, and even though we knew which direction to head in now, I didn’t feel safe walking there. I didn’t feel very safe walking back to the metro we’d just left 3 or so blocks down. On the other hand, I didn’t really feel much better following a random guy and his friend down a dark alley in hope he might be telling the truth and escort us to our hostel after eating.

Literally, in my head I’m running the chance of us fighting these two guys off if they attack. I could get in a good hit, and my one friend is perry strong and capable, but my other friend would be useless. So I’m thinking of some sort of defence plan where I both help my one friend fight but also pull my other friend out if the way, because yeah, we decided to follow these guys into the dark alleyway of Paris and hope he was as kind and harmless as he seemed.

We got to the Caffe and sit down for a nice lunch and his friend goes to the restroom. And the guy tells us how they’re artists and paint giant murals on the sides of large buildings, and he was super nice. Eventually I asked if his friend was okay cause he was in the bathroom for a while and he told me yeah, that he’s just shooting up in there.

Oh, okay.

We ate lunch and they escorted us to the hostel and we give him some snacks we brought from home as a thank you and they were off.

And there was a fucking metro station right in front of the hostel! One that was NOT listed anywhere on the hostel website. Fuck that hostel, never again!

I’d go back to Paris though, 9/10, it was a good time.